LA’S SCHOOLS … AND OTHER MUSINGS-On Christmas Eve morning I awoke to find my car had a flat tire. Apparently when they sell skilled carpenters and home handypersons a box of nails they don’t insist that every one of them be accounted for at the end of every day. Predictably one or two end up in the roadway and into the passenger side rear tire of my car.
I took the wounded tire to a tire shop and met the inevitable immigrant tire store manager - and once we got over the ignominy of carpenters not maintaining control of sharp fasteners, we progressed directly to the importance of public education in the realization of the American Dream.
It is the conventional wisdom in his native land – which, from his accent I surmise was in the former Soviet Union, – that with every new school built+opened society can close down a prison.
Victor Hugo supposedly said “He that opens a school door, closes a prison.” – though no one can cite where he said it. The quote is also attributed to Mark Twain – always available to take the credit – though Twain liked to make stuff up and attribute it to Disraeli.
In 1885 Hugo’s countryman Hippolyte Laroche said:
Qu’ils s’appliquent surtout à chasser l’ignorance,
Cette source du crime et de l’intolérance;
Qu’ils donnent à l’esprit un plus large horizon :
Où l’on ouvre une école , on ferme une prison !
…which Google+I translate as:
Those who intend to hunt ignorance,
That source of crime and intolerance;
They have a wider prospect in mind:
Where a school is opened, it closes a prison!
Sadly, my tire store manager observed, something has gone amiss with the conventional wisdom.
● Newstory: PHILADELPHIA CLOSES 23 SCHOOLS, BUILDS $400 MILLION PRISON |● Extra Credit: Editorial – Rethinking Replacing Men’s Central Jail |
WITH THE PASSING OF THE OLD YEAR AND THE BIRTH OF THE NEW we channel our inner David Letterman and produce lists of the best and worst of things. Rather than generate my own I have read the others and have picked and chosen. I noticed a great tendency to celebrate the demise of ©orporate $chool ®eform with every critical report, study or setback. Yet with every charter school that closes five or six spring forth – like Mickey’s brooms in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Human nature being human nature, the data-driven tend to shop-for the data that they can agree with.
ON THE NATIONAL SCENE, the demise of InBloom, the great proposed student data base/clearing house /information exchange to end all databases was the biggest news; somewhere Big Brother weeps at the lost opportunity. There were studies and white papers and charter schools and all the other flavors of ©$® were pilloried and lambasted and kept on coming. The Common Core State Standards were subjected to abuse from the Right and the Left and kept on coming. Arne Duncan kept on coming – causing one to wonder in what attic of the US Dept of Ed the ugly picture that-keeps getting uglier is hidden?
MORE LOCALLY the forces of ©$® bought themselves a court victory with some billionaire philanthropy in Vergara v. CA. ● Californians defeated Marshall Tuck and reelected Tom Torlakson. (Tuck immediately got a gig at the Alliance Charter Schools.) ● LAUSD District 1 voters defeated Alex Johnson and elected George McKenna. (Johnson immediately got a gig at the County Board of Ed) ● The LAUSD iPads/Apple/Pearson deal frayed and the MiSiS loose ends unwove and the Deasy regime unraveled as Doctor John submitted friend -of-the-court-testimony of his own failure-of-leadership, left Beaudry for Korea …and never returned. Maybe they traded him for Michelle Rhee? (…w also disappeared.) ● And the FBI came to call and hauled away boxes of Apple/Pearson files …apparently the federal grand jury needs something to read.
Priorities, as always, are the political bugaboo: From Today’s LA Times listing of the challenges of 2105:
"’The governor can't keep singing the same song’ about belt-tightening’, said state Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles). Mitchell, who before being elected to the Legislature directed an organization that helped children and families. ‘We've got to address the 2 million kids who live in poverty. If we don't, they won't get out.’
“Brown and the Legislature should devote more money to early childhood care and education for newborns to 5-year-olds, because "they don't get do-overs," she said.
“Democrats are also making plans to extend the temporary tax increase voters approved in 2012, when Brown told them it would help to avoid yet another round of cuts in education funding and other needs.
“The governor has put a spike though the idea of extending the taxes, which are slated to begin expiring in 2016, even though legislative analysts have noted the possibility of a downturn in coming years.
"’It will be tight,’ Brown said.”
IN OTHER WORDS: High Speed Rail trumps Early Childhood Healthcare+Ed. And Prop 30 and the Local Control Funding Formula were one-time-money applied to a one-time problem. When those levies+programs expire the playing field for poor students and English language learners and foster kids will be level – and all the cuts from the recession will be made up for. Problem solved; there will be no need for more education funding.
PETER GREENE, who blogs at Curmudgucation.blogspot.com wrote on Dec 31st that “The biggest win of 2014 was also the quietest one.”
Let him tell you what it was, in case you missed it:
“In the midst of a staggering assault on public education, with their integrity, judgment, reputation, and ability under attack by everyone from corporate stooges to the US Secretary of Education, and, in many areas, with their job security under direct assault by people who don't know what the hell they're talking about, while powerful forces worked to dismantle the very institutions and ideals that they have devoted their lives to-- in the middle of all that, millions of teachers went to work and did their jobs.
“In environments ranging from openly hostile to merely unsupportive, teachers went into their classrooms and did their best to meet the needs of their students. Teachers helped millions of young human become smarter, wiser, more capable, more confident, and better educated. Millions of teachers went to school, met students where they were, and helped those students move forward, helped them grasp what it meant to be fully human, to be the most that they could be. Teachers helped millions of students learn to read and write and figure and draw and make music and play games and know history and understand science and a list of things so varied and rich that I have no room here for them all.
“When so many groups were slandering us and our own political leaders were giving us a giant middle finger, we squared our shoulders and said, "Well, dammit, I've got a job to do, and if even if I've got to go in there and do it with my bare hands in a hailstorm, I'm going to do it." And we did.
“Yes, some of us finally ran out of fight this year. There's no shame in that; despite what our detractors say, this is not a job that just anybody can do for a lifetime, particularly not under today's conditions. The people who had to leave the classroom are just our measure of how hard it is to stay these days.
“And yet, this year, millions of us stayed and fought and taught and did our best this year. While powerful forces lined up to make us fail, or at least make us look as if we were failing, we went into our classrooms armed with professional skills and knowledge and experience and judgment and hours of outside preparation and work, and we didn't fail. We stood up for our students, stood up for the education, their future, their value as human beings. We didn't fail.
“So, if you want the biggest public education win of 2014, there it is. Millions of teachers, caught in a storm not of their own making, under fire, under pressure, under the thumb of people with far more money and power still stood up and did their job. The powers that be tried to make us fail, and we got the job done anyway. Celebrate that.”
(Scott Folsom is a parent and parent leader in LAUSD. He is the former President of Los Angeles 10th District PTSA and represents PTA as Vice-chair the LAUSD Construction Bond Citizen's Oversight Committee. Scott is a member of the California State PTA Board on Managers. He blogs at the excellent 4 LA Kids … where this perspective was originally posted.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 2
Pub: Jan 6, 2015
